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The new US President has signed an executive order to withdraw from the TPP just two days after his inauguration on Friday.
“We’ve been talking about this for a long time,” Mr Trump said as he signed the executive order in the Oval Office today.
The President hailed the withdrawal from TTP as a "great thing for the American worker".
Mr Trump vowed to quit TTP during his presidential campaign, branding the treaty a “potential disaster” for America.
He has promised to replace the deal with “fair bilateral trade deals that bring jobs and industry back onto American shores”.
Mr Trump has been a vocal critic of multi-national trade agreements such as TPP, claiming that the deals put business interests before American jobs.
Reuters
Donald Trump holds up the executive order on withdrawal from the Trans Pacific Partnership
What is the Trans-Pacific Partnership?
The TPP is a major trade deal between American and 11 other nations along the rim of the Pacific Ocean.
The Asian-Pacific deal was former US President Barack Obama's most significant trade deal and took seven years to negotiate.
The agreement, signed in February 2016, aimed to remove tariffs and other trade barriers as well as unifying regulations on goods and services.
Critics of the deal have said that it threatens US jobs. TTP covers everything from agriculture to carmakers and technology firms.
It includes a mechanism which would allow private companies to sue national governments if they break the terms of the TPP or pass laws that might hurt their business.
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Who is part of TTP?
The US, Japan, Malaysia, Vietnam, Singapore, Brunei, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Mexico, Chile and Peru are all signatories on the agreement.
Together these nations are responsible for 40 per cent of the world’s GDP and 26 per cent of the world’s trade – totalling $1.5 trillion of trade in goods in 2012 and $242 billion of services in 2011.
Notably, the deal does not include China. Critics have called the TPP an attempt to “contain” China and build a strong free trade area to rival its growing economy.
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